Losing, Al Gore style

WorldNetDaily contributor Linda Bowles is a
nationally syndicated columnist. She and her husband, Warren, have one
daughter, Michelle, and live on a ranch situated on the western slope of
the California Sierras.

Al Gore has written his legacy as the poorest sport and sorest loser
in American history. President-elect George W. Bush won the Florida vote
on Election Day. He won a mandatory recount of the same vote. He won
again after absentee votes were added. And he won a fourth time
following a series of manual recounts in heavily Democrat counties
ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. Still, Al Gore will not concede.
He persists with efforts to undermine and overturn these election
results using an army of lawyers to redefine what the meaning of a
“vote” is.

Before sharing my opinions of the current political imbroglio and the
legal circus it has become, it is only fair to acknowledge right up
front that I do not have a reverential view of the legal profession as a
whole. From my jaundiced perspective, the majority of lawyers plying
their trade, at almost any moment in time, are engaged either in the
circumvention of the law, the exoneration of criminals, the
deconstruction of the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, the
distortion of objective reality, legal blackmail, the overthrow of
discernible truth, the manipulation of the ignorant masses and the
defeat of justice.

It is important to distinguish between lawyers and liberal
politicians. Lawyers are perfectly willing to sell themselves to either
side in a dispute. They are not lying for principle; they are lying for
money. On the other hand, liberal politicians may be thought of as
“principled” liars, in that they lie nobly to advance priceless,
ideological causes.

Bear with me while I draw an ominous parallel. Communism has a
pragmatic moral standard. It defines as moral any act that advances the
cause of communism, including but not limited to lying, slander,
character assassination, blackmail, espionage and defending a corrupt
leader. By the same standard, telling the truth and exposing corrupt
leaders are considered immoral acts if they disadvantage communist
causes.

However, for purposes of this discussion, we will stick to simple
lying and deception as liberal virtues when they are means for achieving
liberal ends — such as making sure the right people win an election.

This brings us to the high sounding rhetoric of Gore and Lieberman.
Given the context, it is stunning to hear their pious and saccharine
proclamations that “every vote must count,” “all we want is a full, fair
and accurate count,” and that it is important to carry out the “will of
all the people.”

The context is this: The recounts which the Democrats requested were
in four select counties, where most voters are Democrats, the voting
apparatus is run by Democrat politicians, most elected officials are
Democrats and most judges are Democrats.

The cherry-picking of these particular counties, to the exclusion of
63 others, hardly reflects a desire to carry out the “will of all the
people.” It is more accurate to say that this is a strategy calculated
to carry out the will of Democrats and ensure that every Democrat vote
must count.

The point is made that Republicans had their chance to call for
recounts. That is true, and maybe they would have done just that, if
they had known the seven Florida Supreme Court judges, all Democrats,
would void Florida election statutes, take charge of the election
process, change the rules for counting votes after the election was over
and extend the time for submitting them. The U.S. Supreme Court has
agreed to review the authority of the Florida Supreme Court to do these
things.

The Democrat Party sent out a five-page memo to Democrat lawyers
stationed all over Florida to advise them how to invalidate military
votes from overseas with legalisms and technicalities. The strategy of
thwarting the will of likely Bush voters worked. Canvassing boards in
all counties rejected 1,527 military ballots while approving 2,199.

In heavily Democratic Broward County, the Democrat canvassing board
revealed its “principled” evenhandedness by counting 92 military ballots
and throwing out a whopping 304 of them. This is the county where
hundreds of new votes were manufactured for Gore based on dimple
divinations, defined as uneducated guesses about what the voter might
have been trying to do.

Even as Gore and Lieberman were making public statements supporting
the inclusion of military ballots, their teams of lawyers were in the
field fighting to keep it from happening. Obviously the idea that “every
vote should count” does not apply to votes by the men and women in the
military.

Every dirty and dishonorable thing that has been going on in Florida
since the Bush-Cheney team won the presidential election is a preview of
the “principled” ugliness a Gore-Lieberman administration would have
brought to America.